


We Grow like Trees

by ladydirewolf1



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Eventual Romance, F/M, First Love, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 07:34:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16782520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladydirewolf1/pseuds/ladydirewolf1
Summary: The 74th Hunger Games are over, and Haymitch, Katniss, and Peeta begin life together in Victor's Village. But the pain of the Games still haunts these victors, and Katniss finds herself growing closer to her mentor as her other relationships are irreversibly torn apart by the tragedy and trauma they all endured.





	1. Ghost Town

“Am I supposed to pretend it didn’t happen?”

I close my eyes against their voices. Peeta and Gale and the question I don’t have an answer for. Can’t answer. Not yet, anyway.

On the train with Peeta it was easier.

“Yes,” I had said, cheek pressed against the cool glass of the window. It helped with the puffiness. I had been crying more than I cared to let on ever since we got on the stupid train. “It was a game, Peeta. It’s over and I—I can’t—” my voice had cracked, then faltered out completely. When I had lifted my head away from the window, he was gone.

Now my eyes are locked on Gale’s. He repeats the question. My gaze flickers away, taking in the district’s main square. A few men and women are already on their way to work, or to the Hob, but for most it’s still too early. The victor’s train had pulled up just before sunrise, and now the sky is clear and flecked with pale pink, blue-gray. 

“I don’t want to do this here,” I muster up, eyes returning to his. I hadn’t asked him to meet me when I got off the train. How he found out when we’d arrive, I have no idea. A peacekeeper, maybe, one with loose lips. I had wanted to do this somewhere far off in our woods, where no one could watch or hear us. _Our woods_. I wonder if we still can share them. “Can’t we…”

“Yeah,” Gale spits out. He’s angry now, his mouth set in a hard line. “Sure, Katniss. Some other time.” He turns around and disappears in the direction of the Meadow.

I take a few seconds to breathe then walk back towards the train. When I arrive, I’m surprised to find Haymitch still there.

“Can’t find your way to your new home?” he calls out.

I want to smile, but my jaw feels numb. “Will they be there?” I ask.

He nods. “The peacekeepers would have moved the families in a few days ago.” He stands, groaning, swaying slightly. I reach out a hand when I think he’s about to tip over, but he just waves it off. “C’mon, sweetheart. Let’s get you home to that little sister.”

“Home sweet fucking home,” Haymitch says.

I look at the twelve houses, all nearly identical. “Well, I know which one is yours,” I say, pointing. The one right across from us has a porch littered with bottles.

Haymitch grins. “Then that’ll be yours, sweetheart.” He points. I follow his finger, but I have to squint until I understand—in the window, just barely visible beside a gauzy curtain, is a lump of scraggly orange fur.

I run to the sound of Haymitch laughing, Prim’s name flying from my lips. I haven’t even reached the porch before my sister crashes into me.

For the first time since the games ended, I don’t care who sees me cry.

“Goodnight,” I whisper, smoothing my hand against her wispy blonde hair. She looks so different now…older, even though her eyes are as wide as they’ve always been, and her skin is still smooth and fair. “Little duck,” I say, tapping her nose.

She watches me tuck her in, then says in a small voice, “Katniss?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you…” I feel my throat tighten at what she’s about to say. “I’ve missed you.”

I breath out a sigh of relief. Prim’s the only person I can say I love, but I don’t think I can talk about the Games with her. Not yet. Maybe never.

“I’ve missed you too,” I say, pressing a kiss against her forehead. “So, so much.”

I close her bedroom door and wander back towards my own on the opposite end of the house, and I think how strange it is to be this spaced out, to not have the three of us squeezed together on that old straw mattress. This is the life of luxury, I guess. The spoils of victory.

I pass my mother’s room and see her bundled up beneath a heavy down blanket. When she’s sleeping, she looks like the woman my father knew.

I continue on.

I settle under my own covers, trying to relax under the heavy, soft weight. We slept like this in the Capitol, and on the train, but for some reason this feels different. Being home is different. Even now I feel cold, like the numbness in my head is trickling down into my chest, my fingers, my toes. I wiggle them, and they move, but that’s all.

As I roll over and shut my eyes, I wonder what it would feel like to have that feverish boy from the Games curled up beside me.

“Rue!”

I gasp and clamp a hand over my mouth. I’m upright, blankets shoved to the end of the bed, soaked in cold sweat. I tentatively pull the hand away and look at it in the moonlight streaming in through the window behind me. My fingers shake. The nightmares are back. Dying brown flowers, a spear thrust through Rue’s gut, then mine. But every time I pull it out and turn around to see the child whose hands grip the handle, I stare into my own wild eyes.

When I sleep it’s easier to admit I am a monster.

I untangle my feet. I need to get the hell out of here.

I slip out of the house in only my creamy silk nightgown, the one Effie insisted I keep. I’m too hot to wear much else, anyway. I look up and down the neighborhood, staring at each house. It’s like a ghost town, and I’m the lady in white. I bite back a laugh. I’m not dead, but I might as well be.

For about half an hour I wander aimlessly up and down the street. Maybe my nightmarish brain wants to find Peeta, but even if he’s here, I find no sign of which house contains the Boy with the Bread.

It’s probably the fifth or sixth time that my feet have carried me the length of the neighborhood when I find myself suddenly stopped. I look around, confused, but I’m not in front of my house. No, the garish brass number isn’t right.

The bottles are still there. _Haymitch_.

Without thinking, I walk up to his door and press my ear against the wood. Of course I hear nothing. He’s probably asleep. But I know there’ll be something in that house to turn my brain off for the night.

Silently, I ease myself inside. It’s not hard to keep quiet after years hunting in the forest and…I shake my head. I don’t want to think about that.

The interior is, as I expected, worse than the porch. There are bottles piled up on every surface—the dark glass-faced bookshelf, the potted Cypress, the dining room table still set for six. I pick a few up and even turn a few over, but each one comes up dry. Frustrated, I slam one down against the kitchen counter, then freeze. I stare up the staircase for a few seconds, breathing hard, but nothing happens. I don’t want him to know I’m here. He doesn’t need to know how messed up the Games left his victor, and he certainly doesn’t need to care.

I check the rest of the first floor before approaching the staircase. I worry at my bottom lip, then place a foot on the first step. I test it with my weight, then add my other foot. Luckily I’m barefoot, or luckily they built these houses well, because not a single step creaks.

The second floor rooms are just as dry as the first, but still I make sure to check every one except the room with the closed door. As I search, I can’t help but notice how the rooms look just like mine—barely used, if not at all. _What happened to his family?_

Finally, as I knew I would, I am left with my arms crossed at Haymitch’s bedroom door. Of course the old man would keep his liquor locked up with him. Sighing, I test the handle. Open. I guess he has nothing to fear, living in Victor’s Village. Nobody has set foot in this strange place but him in over two decades.

I check the rest of the room before even really looking at the bed, but when my hands come up empty, I force my eyes over to it. Haymitch is, to my surprise, curled up in a ball, his chin tucked to his chest and his knees bent. I can’t imagine it would be comfortable, but then again, I hardly sleep at all. I guess it works.

He has those nice soft pajama pants they give you in the Capitol, but the matching shirt is crumpled on the floor. I shove the top aside with my foot.

I tiptoe over to his side and spot a bottle resting on the edge of the mattress. He has one hand just barely holding onto it, and the other’s hidden inside his mess of limbs. Careful, slowly, I lower myself into a kneeling position, then as I hold my breath, I reach for the one bottle of liquor in this entire fucking house. Maybe he hasn’t had time to replenish his stock. Maybe he’s already drunken everything he had left.

My fingers have just met the cool bottle when I hear him, confused and muffled from sleep. “Astrid?”

I wait for his eyes to open, but they don’t. His face is crossed with worry now, and the lines of age and pain emerge on his face once again.

I don’t move my hand as I whisper, “No. It’s Katniss.”

His eyes blink open at that, and in second he’s got a knife pointed at my throat. I don’t move.

Haymitch blinks a few more times, like he’s trying to clear away my face. I guess it won’t go away, because he lets out a groan and falls onto his back, knife thrown aside.

“Pass me that bottle, sweetheart.”

I nod and roll it towards him across the mattress, then watch as he takes a swig. A sour look crosses over his face, but I doubt it’s from the whiskey.

“You could have stabbed me,” I say quietly as he takes another drink.

“That’s what you get for sneaking up on me in my own damn house,” he grunts. Haymitch looks at me for the first time like I’m not just a part of his dream. Or nightmare. I suppose I belong more in the latter. “It’s night.”

“Yeah, I know. I went for a walk,” I say. I look away. I don’t like when people watch me like he is. Like he’s trying to solve a puzzle. “This place is creepy.”

He huffs out a laugh. “Tell me about it.”

We’re both silent for a minute, me listening to his slowly steadying breathing. Him drinking. I’m surprised when he holds the now quarter-empty bottle out to me.

“Why you’re here, isn’t it?”

I accept it. The liquor burns my throat. I feel a warmth begin to spread in my chest, but it’s not the hot, searing kind my nightmares leave me in. It’s good. Safe.

“I never used to know why you drink this stuff so much,” I say, pulling the bottle from my lips and twisting it in my hands. I can feel his eyes on me as I take another large gulp.

“Tastes good, don’t it?”

“No,” I say firmly.

He laughs. This time it’s less air, more voice. I can’t remember the last time someone’s laughed with me. In the games me and Peeta would sometimes crack jokes, but those were different. Raw. They held us together when our heads and bodies wanted nothing more than to fall apart.

His large, calloused hand takes the bottle from my own. I look up, affronted. His eyes are hard as he looks back at me, fully awake and…angry.

“What was that for?” I ask, rising to my feet. “You think you’re the only one who needs a fucking drink at night?” My breathing gets faster, my face grows hot. I don’t care. This man has seen me angry before. “I don’t want to be here, Haymitch! I don’t—I don’t—I don’t,” I hiccup, hating how my voice is raised and cracking. I rake a hand through my hair, but when my fingers snag on the knots, the usually calming gesture just angers me more. “I don’t deserve to live, and you can’t give me a fucking drink?” I yell. My vision blurs. I can’t breathe right.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Haymitch mutters, standing up only to pull me down beside him. I let my body be placed against his chest, his arms wrapping around me from behind, his chin resting against the top of my head. He makes soothing sounds as I cry against his sheets. After a moment I try to push him off, jabbing my elbows backwards against his hard body, but he only holds me tighter.

“Let me go,” I sob, now trying with my feet. My heel collides with his shin, and he grunts in frustration.

“You need to settle down,” he mutters into my hair. “None of us deserve to live, sweetheart. You’re not so special.” His hand comes up to cover the one hiding my face. His strong fingers intertwine with mine, and I remember my father doing the same. I could never bear to let anyone see me cry, but every time I’d cover my wet, puffy face, my father would pull the hand away, kiss it, and tell me it was ok. Haymitch doesn’t kiss my hand. I hate how I wish he would, then I hate myself even more for how good this feels. To be held.

“Katniss, I can’t let you drink that because I do not want you to become me,” Haymitch says, more firmly than before. “I know what you’re going through, but…”

“You let yourself forget, though,” I say. All those bottles downstairs, collected from decades of drinking. No man could remember after all of that, right?

“Sweetheart, does it look like I’ve forgotten?”

His arms have relaxed a bit, so I use the opportunity to roll over and face him. He looks startled, but he doesn’t move away. I don’t think we’ve been this close before. Not for this long, anyway. He feels like Peeta, just…bigger.

I keep my eyes on his, trying to understand. I don’t really know what happened to him, not really. I’ve never come close to meeting the fourteen-year-old boy who survived the arena. Who came home to…what? Did he have a mother and sibling waiting in the victor’s village? Astrid? I’m about to say the name when Haymitch presses his lips against my forehead.

“Go to sleep, sweetheart,” he says, almost strictly. “Just try to go to sleep.”

I wait for him to release me, to send me off to my own pretty ghost town house, but he closes his eyes instead. I stay because Haymitch knows exactly who I am. Not who I was, like Gale, or who I should be, like Peeta, but who the games turned me into. We’re killers, him and I.

I drift off to the weight of his arm around me and the scent of whiskey breathed out softly against my skin.


	2. Blood

I slip out before Haymitch wakes, my cheeks growing red as I take one last look at his bed. It’s better this way. Neither one of us has to pretend to care against the harsh daytime sun.

Once I’ve crossed the short distance to my house, I climb the porch steps and let myself inside. Mother’s already up and in the kitchen, and my head tilts as I consider the smell wafting down the hall.

“Is that…bacon?”

She starts, then a smile lights up her face. “It is,” she says, flipping a strip over.

I stay in the doorway, suddenly afraid that if I come closer, the happiness will burst. I’ve never seen my mother cook bacon, never seen her cook much of anything for breakfast. We were always more of a cold oats, stale bread kind of family.

“Katniss, put a sweater on,” she says, glancing up from her frying pan. “I’m cold just looking at you.”

I frown, then look down at my body. My skin is covered in goosebumps, and my nightgown hangs loose from the skinny straps at my shoulders. I’m not even that cold.

It might have something to do with the warmth of Haymitch’s bed. His body in that bed beside mine, warm like the sleeping bag in that damp cave, like Prim’s body never was even when we pressed together from nose to toes. Most likely I will never share another human’s warmth at night again, or their cold for that matter. In this pretty new house we have more beds than we need, and it’s not like I’ll ever marry a man and share his. My decision is even stronger since returning home from the Games.

I nod and tell her I’ll be right back.

After breakfast with Mother and Prim, I pull on my old hunting attire and head out towards town. It’s almost noon, and a Sunday, so the streets are filled with people. 

Some say things—nice things—while others keep their distance. But they all stare. Every old man pushing his cart of goods to the Hob, every schoolgirl enjoying the sunshine with friends, every woman with a baby in hand and another at her breast.

I think they’re afraid of me. Effie would say they want to be me. Perhaps both is true, but when I pass a dull-eyed girl that looks my age with a naked, skinny toddler at her hip, I wonder if they’d rather see me dead. I get to live with all the Capitol’s riches while they get to starve.

The sun’s beaming down overhead when I finally arrive at Gale’s house. A boy answers the door. He has Gale’s eyes and Gale’s look, but he’s a mere quarter of Gale’s height. I’d say he’s six, but some kids don’t grow so tall here in the Seam.

“Hi there,” I say, forcing a smile on my lips as I crouch down. “Is your brother home?”

The boy puffs out his cheeks and nods. “Gale?”

My smile widens. “Do you think you could go find him for me?” I ask. I would just barge in myself, but I’m not sure what Gale’s family would make of me after what they saw on TV.

He sputters out the air and runs off, leaving me standing awkwardly for almost ten minutes in the doorway.

Finally footsteps thump my way. “Gale,” I breathe out, surprised when a blush heats up my cheeks. I try to look into his hard eyes. “I thought we could go out.”

He eyes my hunting boots and jacket. “Already went.”

I frown. “But it’s just now noon.”

Gale puts a hand on the doorframe, filling the whole space with his lanky body. “Yeah, well, ever since you left I’ve gotten used to going earlier. Job and all that.”

My lips part, and I blink away my shock. “What kind of job?” I ask slowly, carefully, afraid that I already know.

He looks down, and I copy him. A coat of jet-black dust clings to the doormat. A gasp of air rushes out. “You took a job in the mine?” I feel an urge to slam my fists into his chest, but I hold myself back. If he’s going to play cool, then so can I. Instead I dig my nails into my palms, grimacing.

“What was I supposed to do?” he asks, eyes wide and gleaming with anger. I take a step back. “You were _gone_ , Katniss. Gone into that awful arena running around doing God knows what, and I couldn’t bring in as much game as we used to.”

I blink back stinging tears at his words. “You know exactly what happened in there,” I whisper. My throat feels thick, my eyes heavy.

He stares at me for too many seconds. His hand drops from the doorframe. Maybe he will forgive me after all.

“You’re right. I do. And I know you’re perfectly capable of hunting on your own.”

The forest looks the same, but something is different.

Silently, smoothly, I notch an arrow and pull the string taunt. A plump turkey stands thirty or so feet from my position behind a moss-coated boulder. I watch as it rustles around in a patch of damp leaves, looking for an earthworm to snatch.

My fingers ache. I’ve been watching for too long.

I breathe out and decide to count to ten in my head. On ten I’ll let go.

_One. Two. Three…_ It’s just a turkey, for heaven’s sake. I’ve killed hundreds.

_Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight._ I look at my hand, the one gripping the frame of my bow. My knuckles are white.

_Nine._

Miraculously, the turkey’s head snaps towards my hiding spot. It’s beady brown eye blinks. It cocks its head, then lets out a screech. It’s too late, it’s now or never.

_Ten!_

I drop my bow and stare at the arrow. It’s lodged in a tree trunk.

“Argh!” I scream, scaring off any and all game in this section of the wood. I stomp over to my arrow and rip it out, then chuck it into the ground.

I sink down beside it, head cradled in my hands. I don’t cry, but I want to.

It was just a stupid turkey.

The forest looks the same. I’m different.

I don’t see anyone except my family for the rest of the week…except when I sleep, but the brown bottle I purchased in the Hob takes care of the worst of it. By Saturday night, Prim, Mother, and I are in our fancy living room, just sitting in content silence. Well, I’m just sitting. My family has taken up embroidery now that they can afford nice thread and needles. 

I scooch over on the couch to see what Prim’s working on.

“Is that a field?” I ask, fingering her work. It’s a mixture of pale green and yellow thread on some hem. A dress, maybe, or a skirt.

She smiles up at me. “The Meadow.”

I tuck back a loose stand of her hair. “It’s not so scary now, is it? Remember how afraid you were when you were just a baby duck?”

“I wasn’t afraid of the _Meadow_ ,” Prim insists as she gets back to work. She picks up a needle and puts it between her lips as she chooses a new spool. “Just where it led to.”

Funny how dangerous we once thought the woods were. And they are, if the wrong people catch you sneaking in there. But the real danger is far away in that shiny white city. I don’t tell Prim, though. She’s smart enough and old enough to know now.

“Have you talked to Peeta much?”

I look over at my mother, focused on the pillowcase lain across her lap. She’s adding Primrose flowers to the border. I think she plans on giving it to me once the pillowcase is done. Her bedroom is the closest to mine. I know she’s heard me screaming at night. Sobbing. A pillowcase is all she can do about it, apparently.

“No,” I say. My voice sounds ashamed, but I’m not. _I’m not_. Peeta knew what he was getting into in the Games.

“Maybe you should invite him over to dinner someday,” she says lightly.

“Why?” I ask, too harshly.

Prim and Mother both look at me, startled. Prim answers before Mother can find the words. “We just thought you two cared about each other. As friends.”

_Oh._ “Yeah. We’re friends, I guess.” I realize how odd this must look for them after having television screens broadcast our love to the entire nation. “He’d like that, I think.”

“Good,” my mother says happily. She’s not smiling as she returns to her work, though. Disappointed that I couldn’t love the Baker’s son.

When I leave dressed to hunt the next day, I don’t bother stopping by the Seam first.

I’m deeper into the forest this time, where the trees stretch up and up and up, and their branches knit a web in the sky. This is where the big game lurks. Gale and I shot our first buck here all those years ago.

I’ve been tracking a family of deer for a few hours now, and they’ve led me into a clearing. Springy grass covers the forest floor, and the trees are thin and sparse. Good for masking footsteps, bad for cover.

The mama deer has her head lowered as she grazes while the two fawns play a few feet from her side. I never liked killing the mothers, but meat is meat.

That’s what I tell myself as I draw my bow. _Meat is meat_. I don’t need it, but I can give it to Gale. If not Gale, then a gift for the butcher. 

Again, I count to ten. _You can do it. Don’t be a baby._

I close my eyes. I can’t watch.

I hear the arrow whistling past me, hear the scampering of tiny hooves, the scream of the mother, then her thud as she falls against the grass.

When I open my eyes, a body lays there instead.

I scream and fall backwards on my hands, but I can still hear it—hear _him_. I retch, then throw myself onto my hands and knees. I crawl up to the body. Blood covers him. It pools in the grass, it coats his skin and clothes. My hands reach for his shoulder to turn him over, to see his face.

Marvel. District One. He moans. My throat constricts.

My red, dripping, trembling hands claw at my neck. They slip upwards to my head.

“I’m sorry,” I cry, covering my eyes. I can’t look. “I’m sorry.” I can’t look, but I have to take the arrow out.

He screams again as I rip the shaft from his body. Hot. My face is hot. I can’t stop my hands from shaking. The arrow falls beside me.

He’s quiet now. I open my mouth for air, and a metallic taste fills it. I retch again, doubling over in the grass. It feels so nice and damp that I lay down completely.

I crack an eye open. Through the grass, through the blood, I stare into the eyes of the mama deer.

I don’t remember walking home. I might have ran. My clothes are ripped. I don’t remember if it was the fence or the branches.

My fists pounds against the door, then I take a step back. I feel my hair. Sticky. I pull out a clump of grass, then stare at it in my palm. It’s red.

I knock again, harder. My hand hurts.

“What the hell?” Haymitch’s face drops when he sees me. “Oh, sweetheart.”

“Let me in,” I mutter. But when I step forward, two large hands stop me, grabbing my shoulders. “Let me in!” I say, my voice beginning to constrict with sobs. “You’re supposed to help me.”

He shakes me, and I stare angrily at his rough hands. “I know, and I will. But we’re not doing it in my house.”

Haymitch grabs my wrist and pulls me over to my own door. No one answers.

“Where are they?” he asks. His fingers are still locked around my wrist, just a little too tightly to be comfortable. It feels good.

“Out,” I say. “Dinner. Mother and Prim started having friends again.”

“Well isn’t that something,” I hear him say as he drags me inside.

Haymitch leaves me in the doorway of the bathroom. I stare at myself in the mirror. I look like a monster with my whole upper body covered in blood.

_You are._

I close my eyes and see him.

“Katniss?”

My eyes open. I don’t know how long I’ve been standing in front of the mirror. I guess enough for him to wonder why the water wasn’t on.

“I’m a monster,” I whisper to the red girl.

Haymitch sighs and pushes past me. I hear him turn on the bathtub faucet.

“Stop talking,” he grunts. In the reflection, I see him asses me. He looks sad. When I don’t move, he turns me around and begins to unbutton my hunting jacket.

When I’m down to my bra and underwear, Haymitch looks decidedly out the doorway while turning off the faucet. “Get in, already,” he says. “I don’t run baths for just anyone, sweetheart.”

Now stripped, I step in and sink down. I submerge myself completely. It’s so easy to drown, really. You can do it in your bathtub. I could have done it in the Games. There was water there. Suicide doesn’t play well with viewers, though.

I feel a fingers on my shoulder, and I force myself to the surface. The water is bright red now, the color leeching out of me like it’s my own.

I wish it was.

After a moment, Haymitch reaches for a washcloth. He squirts some fancy honey and vanilla soap onto it, then brings it to my skin. I’m silent as he works at my face and hair. He’s surprisingly gentle. He’s babying me, but I try to ignore it for now. I shouldn’t complain when he’s being nice and helping.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Now what do you have to be sorry for?”

My lips part. I’m not sure what to say—for surviving the Games? For lying to Peeta? For bothering him when he deserves a quiet night in Victors fucking Village?

“The blood isn’t mine,” I say finally, quietly.

He huffs out a laugh. “I think I would have noticed by now if it were.” He pulls my hair over my shoulder, then runs the washcloth over the back of my neck. Water drips back into the tub. I shudder. “Is it human?”

I turn. “No!”

His lips are set in a hard line. “I know that too,” he says, nudging my shoulder so I’m facing away from him once again. “Just wondering why you’re so worked up, is all.”

I frown as he reaches in the water to pick up my hand, but say nothing as he works the washcloth in between my fingers, against my nails.

The water becomes cool before he finishes. I think I’m scrubbed clean long before he stands, but I suppose he wanted to do a thorough job. Or he thought I’d shut up as long as he was working.

“Get up,” he says as he grabs a huge fluffy towel from the cabinet. I step out. I don’t have time to protest before he wraps it around me, rubbing it against my skin like I used to do for Prim when she was little.

Haymitch stands right in front of me, a few inches away, as he pulls the towel taunt around my body. He reaches for another and drapes it over my head, like a hood.

“Feel better?” he asks, eyeing me close.

_Not really_ , I want to say, but he answers for me. “Actually, don’t answer that. At least you don’t look like you attacked someone.” Haymitch looks around the small bathroom, like he just realized where he was. He clears his throat, then cups my towel-covered cheek. “You need something, you just ask, sweetheart. Even liquor, in small amounts. I got my stock replenished, ok?”

I don’t bother telling him I procured my own stock too. I want to ask him to stay. Or if I can stay in his house. It’s stupid. I don’t. “Thank you, Haymitch.”

He nods curtly, then we both look out the doorway at the sound of footsteps on the first floor. “Family’s home,” he says, voice dropping into a low whisper. “You just tell them that your creepy old neighbor stopped by for some leftovers, you hear?”

I nod and press my cheek into the palm of his hand before it disappears.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my first Hunger Games fic, and please let me know if you'd like to read more!


End file.
